


Virtually Real

by Tarlan



Category: Eureka
Genre: Angst, M/M, Trope Bingo Round 2, Virtual Reality
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-10
Updated: 2013-08-10
Packaged: 2017-12-23 00:39:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,392
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/919949
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tarlan/pseuds/Tarlan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Looking back over those five years, Jack had to admit that those first 18 months in Eureka now seemed tame when compared to the insanity of the years that followed. In many ways it all seemed so unreal, except for the regrets and guilt that still burned so hard that he'd buried them deep.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Virtually Real

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the trope bingo round two prompt: trapped in a dream

Jack shook his head and smiled as he saw his younger self pass them as he drove Zoe back to the airport. It didn't feel like five years since he crashed into this small think-tank of a town. Looking back over those five years, he had to admit that those first 18 months in Eureka now seemed tame when compared to the insanity of the years that followed. It was as if the eggheads were trying to recreate every single science fiction cliche from the comic books and movies he'd loved in his misspent youth.

Missions to Titan, alternate time lines; secret organizations enslaving scientists in a virtual reality; black holes; two suns; a biosphere deep beneath Global Dynamics where people were devolving and, even more mind-boggling, an A.I. deputy who was so life-like that it was hard to tell he wasn't flesh and blood... and who was having cybersex with his house! Then there was the jumping back and forth in time and body swapping incidents.

It was all so insane.

In his most recent journey down the rabbit hole, jumping through a wormhole, he had seen images from what had to be some of those different alternate time lines as well as from the one they currently inhabited. Though, he guessed it was possible that the wormhole had also shown him a mix of past, present and future too, because Allison had been heavily pregnant in one flashing image, and now he had learned she was expecting their baby.

It seemed as if all his memories were linked to the town and the people inhabiting it.

Seeing Nathan again in that slide-show of images had hurt the most, reminding him of why he had fought so hard to stay with Allison. Not only was he fulfilling a promise he'd made to take care of her, and looking after Kevin and Nathan's little girl too, but now he was also giving Jenna a new brother or sister. 

What a day, he thought, and the only thing that would have made this day perfect was having Nathan back, alive and whole.

It had taken until only recently for him to even acknowledge the possibility that he might have been a little in love with the arrogant scientist. In hindsight, he could even understand his attraction to Tess now that he saw her as a female version of Stark... but she wasn't Nathan. In the end he found he couldn't fall in love with her when his memories kept comparing her to her tyrannical predecessor, and he was almost grateful to see her leave for the other side of the world.

Plus he had that promise to keep to Nathan, to look after Allison.

Zoe turned in her seat and smiled at him, and he couldn't help but glance over and smile back. She was his little girl all grown up, and he'd missed her when she first went away to college. He'd missed hearing her voice and hearing her talk about her day, and he had wished he could hold onto her forever, but if there was one thing he had learned when stuck in Beverly's V.R. therapy device all those years ago, it was how to let go of her.

"Problem, dad?"

"Nah. Saw my whole life in Eureka flash before my eyes earlier, like a movie on fastforward."

"Anything stick out in particular?"

He kept his eyes on the road ahead as he mulled over her words. There were good moments.. and bad. He had regrets, and the biggest regret of all was Nathan Stark. Working together to save Fargo not long after Nathan was replaced as head of Global had shown him a different side to the man. He'd realized then that if they hadn't been butting heads over Allison then they might have become friends. Instead that rivalry had carried through all their encounters, and even though he knew it was not his fault, Jack still felt guilty over Nathan's death.

He'd been wishing Nathan would disappear so he didn't have to lose Allison, and on that fateful day his wish had been granted. At the exact moment when Nathan should have been exchanging his wedding vows with Allison, he 'died'. Except Jack hadn't expected Nathan's loss to leave such a big hole in his heart, and he'd dug in deeper still to deny it, using the zaniness of the town as a means to avoid facing the issue. Yet every event, every catastrophe, had slowly and painfully pulled him kicking and screaming out of his denial until he could finally admit that even though he may have got what he thought he wanted when he finally got the girl, Allison was not the person he had truly desired.

Not that he didn't love Allison but that spark of passion had dulled after she chose Nathan over him, and dimmed further when Nathan died. What he felt now was a different kind of love, but still love all the same. He loved Allison. He loved Kevin and Zoe and Jenna. He loved knowing he was going to be a father again. He'd made his vow to be with Allison and fully intended to keep it for as long as she would have him, but sometimes he wondered what his life would have been like if he could have used everything he had learned about himself over these last few years while Nathan was still alive. Would he still have pursued Allison? Or would he have stepped out of his comfortable heterosexual zone to explore those strange feelings for another man?

And not just any man: Nathan Stark, the bane of his existence, or so he thought at the time.

Zoe spoke again. "Someone once told me that the hardest thing you can do is reach out for the unknown. That the greatest courage is in taking that first step."

"Yeah, and hope you don't fall on your ass," Jack added with a grin.

This town had managed to knock his feet from under him far too often for him to worry about personal dignity and looking foolish. Everything they did here was a step into the unknown, though he wished they'd all exercise a little more caution and some common sense. It didn't take a genius to recognize when something was seriously a bad idea.

She grinned back but then sobered. "Did you see Doctor Stark?"

Jack sighed, wondering why he was always so transparent to everyone. One of the reasons why Allison had delayed setting a wedding date was because she wasn't convinced that they were marrying for the right reasons. At first he thought it was because she had already lost two husbands, both of whom she had loved, and was afraid to try again. Over time he realized that she was waiting for him to acknowledge his own losses, and the longer they waited, the less likely it seemed that they would ever set that date. Then just when he needed fate to intervene before he was forced to take a deeper look at his feelings for her ex-husband, they almost drowned, forcing her hand.

Often he wondered if they would still be dancing around wedding plans if it hadn't been for the near death by drowning, especially as Allison seemed reluctant to even tell her family about him, as if she was ashamed of him. But he had a stronger feeling that they would have gone their separate ways if they had delayed much longer, and perhaps just remained as good friends. 

That summed up his life really. Just when everything was going to Hell and he was on the verge of bringing all those deeply buried, messy feelings out into the light, there would be some miraculous 'save' and his secrets would remain safely hidden.

Today had been no different.

He had already saved the universe by leaping into the wormhole and facing all those memories of him and Allison, and Nathan - the eternal triangle as Vince once put it within his hearing - but his own world was still crashing down around him. He hadn't been ready to lose the town, knowing he would have to leave one more safety net behind him and possibly confront his deepest fears and desires before he could move on.

Just when that looked inevitable, Grant had rolled into Eureka and saved them all.

"Deus ex machina," Zoe stated softly.

"Huh?"

"A person or thing that appears suddenly and unexpectedly, and provides a contrived solution to an apparently insoluble situation."

"Huh?"

"Something miraculous turning up at the last second to fix everything."

Jack shook his head and grinned. "I think you lost me, Zo."

"Doctor Grant buying the town to stop it being dismantled."

"Oh. Yeah. That was... unexpected."

"But not unwelcome because I don't think you were ready to leave here just yet, dad. You still have issues to resolve."

Jack frowned as her words mirrored his thoughts, then shook his head again and grinned. "You really must stop listening to your mother. You're beginning to sound just like her."

"You don't have to feel ashamed for liking Doctor Stark."

"One. I am not having this conversation with my daughter," he stressed the word ' _daughter_ '.

"So there is a conversation," she interrupted cheekily, and Jack rolled his eyes.

He'd been really gullible to believe someone as smart as Zoe had an I.Q. of only 112. She was every bit as smart as her mother, and seemed to have the same psycho-analytic brain... if that was even a word.

"Okay. Fine. I liked him... when he wasn't being an egotistic ass with dreams of world domination."

"You liked that about him too, dad."

He laughed softly. "When did you get to be so grown-up?"

"If you could bring him back... Would you?"

"Of course!" He glanced at her in shock for even asking. "They tried though. Henry, Zane, Fargo... They all tried."

"But **you** didn't want him back. Not then."

Jack shook his head, bemused. "What I wanted or didn't want made no difference, Zoe. They tried... and they failed."

"And that's where you're wrong, dad. It made all the difference."

Jack could feel her words choking up inside him and wished this conversation would end. He'd already spent the past few years blaming himself for not stepping into that box instead of Nathan. He was already burdened by the guilt of knowing he'd been wishing Nathan gone when it happened, so he really didn't need Zoe putting even more of the blame onto his shoulders. He almost visibly sighed in relief when the sign for the airport suddenly appeared, realizing he must have lost track of time while they were talking; not noticing the miles passing beneath their wheels.

"Hey! We're almost there."

"Deus ex machina," Zoe stated again just as softly as before.

After saying his goodbye and hugging her tight, Jack waited until her plane took off before heading back to Eureka. With his thoughts churning in his head, the time seemed to pass quickly, but that always seemed to be the case. It was as if he went into some kind of fugue state when not in the middle of some crisis, with hours, days and even weeks and months seeming to pass rapidly sometimes. He shook his head as he crossed the town limits way sooner than he had expected, realizing he must have been deep in thought again not to have noticed the journey back from Portland.

As he drove the last few miles back to the bunker, his thoughts turned to the non-conversation with Zoe.

It was the first time he had ever admitted out loud that he had liked Nathan, and now that gate was open, he could feel the flood of emotions threatening to spill over from all the messy feelings for Nathan that he had damned up inside. What if she was right though, and somehow his negative feelings for Nathan had caused all the attempts to bring him back to fail?

Except that was ludicrous.

Henry, Fargo and Zane had all tried to save Nathan but they simply didn't have the necessary knowledge. Leo Weinbrenner and, yes, Nathan, had been the only two people capable of fixing it, and one of them was a pile of charred flesh while the other - Nathan - had dissolved into sparkles before his eyes. The only other person who had even the remotest chance of understanding the math was an autistic version of Kevin in an alternate time line playing with Grant's time machine.

Jack blinked.

Grant's time machine.

Grant had built a working time machine. Sort of.

By now he had almost reached the bunker but he made a u-turn, heading towards what used to be Beverly's Bed and Breakfast. Grant would be staying there tonight, and as much as the man annoyed him, Jack realized Grant might be the only person on the planet who knew as much about time physics as Nathan and Weinbrenner.

****

"Temporal Physics."

Jack scowled. "I don't care what you call it. Just... look into it, okay?"

Grant raised both eyebrows but Jack could tell he was intrigued. He hadn't met a scientist yet who didn't get a gleam in his or her eye when presented with a challenge related to their field of expertise. Grant was no different from the rest of the geeks and moments later he had his laptop connected to a screen that popped out of nowhere, pulling up details of Weinbrenner's experiment. Jack recognized the formula, singing it silently to the tune of _Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star_ in remembrance as Grant's finger worked along the lines of squiggly characters.

"No. No. No. That's wrong," Grant murmured. "No wait. I see."

Jack backed away slowly, edging his way towards the door until he could slip away unnoticed, leaving Grant lost in thought.

A week later, Grant called him up to Global Dynamics to witness a miracle. As Nathan Stark stepped out the transparent cubicle, looking a little dazed and confused, Jack couldn't stop grinning even though Nathan's return could destroy his well structured world.

****

"Jack?" Nathan stared hard at the man standing before him, drinking in the living and breathing sight of him. "How long?"

Jack's grin sobered to a rueful smile. "Three years... give or take."

"So long," Nathan mused aloud. "You look..." Alive, he added silently. Beautiful and alive.

"How long...?" Jack indicated towards the box.

A lifetime, he thought but answered truthfully. "Three months." Fifteen days, four hours and eighteen minutes since the call came in, he added silently.

"Huh. So about a month for every year."

Nathan didn't pull him up for stating the obvious because it was a joy just to hear his voice again. Instead he glanced around to get his bearings, wondering how much would have changed under Carter's influence. The movement seemed to set everyone else into motion and he found himself fending off the hugs and 'welcome back' calls from Henry, Fargo, Zane and also from someone Nathan had only ever seen in an old black and white photo on the memory wall at Cafe Diem: Doctor Trevor Grant.

Nathan accepted the attention with good grace but kept his gaze mostly on Jack. Eventually, he could stand it no more and gently pushed through the others to reach Jack, watching Jack's grin fade to an uncertain twist of lips. Another step and he had his arms wrapped around the startled man, pulling him in close and holding him. He held on as the tension in Jack's body eased and he sighed softly when he felt Jack's arms wrap around him, patting his back tentatively and awkward at first before finally giving in and hugging him back fiercely. Nathan breathed in and wondered if it was his own sense memory that pulled up the crisp apple scent of the shampoo Jack favored, and the slightly spicy musk of his aftershave that always added to Jack's wholesome, all-American, apple pie image. He breathed in the scent deeply, enjoying the feel of strong muscles and a firm body held in his arms, and the welcome weight of Jack's head pressed against his neck and shoulder. He'd always known they'd be a perfect fit.

Jack pulled away too soon, looking both flustered and a little mortified but Nathan didn't need to glance down to understand why. He had felt the stirring of Jack's cock against him, and knew Jack had felt his response. Jack stumbled back another few steps.

"I have to..." Jack hooked a thumb over his shoulder, towards the exit. "...go tell Allison you're back."

As Jack stepped backwards through the door and turned away, obviously confused by his reaction to Nathan's presence and looking for an escape route, Nathan gasped as the world around him began to disappear. He chased after Jack, stepping through the door of the laboratory straight into the main lobby area of Global. Behind him everything was disappearing, so he moved faster, catching fleeting glimpses of the beige Sheriff's uniform as the world restructured around him. Global Dynamics interior became the parking lot and Jack startled when Nathan slipped into the passenger seat beside him.

"Shouldn't you be getting check out in the Infirmary?"

"Shouldn't Allison be in the Infirmary?"

Caught half in a lie, Jack's cheeks flushed in embarrassment. 

"Nathan... Stark."

"That's my name!" Nathan stated cheerfully, aware that he was throwing Jack even more off balance but he didn't want to let Jack out of his sight for even a moment.

Jack stared hard at him, and Nathan read joy warring with confusion and guilt, though Nathan couldn't imagine why Jack would feel guilty. All Nathan knew was that for the last three months, fifteen days, four hours and assorted minutes, he had spent hours each day watching Jack Carter without being able to communicate with him.

"Allison doesn't know about... I didn't want her to know in case it didn't work. In case Grant couldn't get you back." Jack looked away, eyes closing momentarily as if gathering his thoughts, before looking back at Nathan. "I kept my promise to be there for her. To take care of her after... after you di-... disappeared."

Died. After I died, Nathan thought because that is what Jack thought had happened here, and it was also the reason why he was alive again. Because Jack had wanted him back.

"Jack." Nathan reached out to touch him but Jack flinched away.

"I'm married to Allison. We have a kid on the way."

"Jack." Nathan grasped Jack's face in his hands, forcing Jack to look at him. "It's not real. None of this is real."

****

**Three months, Fifteen Days, Fours Hours and Twenty Minutes Earlier**

"Allie..." He drew out her name. "Even the ex-Mrs. Macarena thought we make a great couple."

Her eyes narrowed in annoyance as the remark praised them while ridiculed Carter, just as Nathan intended. "I mean it, Nathan."

Allison continued on towards the door and Nathan followed. They passed behind Deputy Lupo, who was at the counter taking a large Vinspresso from Vince but, fortunately, there was no sign of Carter. Secretly, Nathan had hoped Dr. Abby Carter would stick around a little longer in case she revealed any more little gems about Carter beyond winning Macarena contests and ' _death by dull_ ' quotes. It was comedy gold as far as Nathan was concerned. Unfortunately, Dr. Carter was already on her way back to L.A., having left the small town forty minutes earlier.

From the corner of his eye, he saw Jo answer her cell phone, and his footsteps faltered when he watched her tense.

"Slow down, Zoe..." Her eyes caught his momentarily before looking to Allison, full of concern. "We're on our way."

"Jo?" Allison have moved over to her quickly.

"It's Carter. Zoe says he's having some sort of seizure." Jo didn't wait for a response, already speed dialing the Global Medical Response Team as she ran from the cafe; her Vinspresso left behind on the counter, forgotten.

"We'll take my car," he stated to Allison, knowing the response team would take at least a further ten minutes to reach Carter from Global.

The flashing lights and siren of Jo's police vehicle had other cars moving out of the way, and Nathan broke every speed limit as he raced behind her. His car kicked up gravel as he slid to a halt alongside Jo's jeep, and his longer strides overtook her easily. The door to the bunker was already standing open and it took barely a moment to get his bearings having been inside the bunker only a month or two earlier.

"Carter?"

Zoe appeared at the top of the stairs, her voice frantic with fear. "Up here!"

Nathan took the stairs three at a time, knowing Jo and Allison were right behind him, only half listening as Zoe babbled, "...so angry," and something about throwing something at her dad.

"He put it on!"

He found Carter sprawled backwards across Zoe's bed, his body seizing violently as twin trails of blood flowed sluggishly down either side of his neck from his ears. His blue eyes were wide open yet blank, partially hidden behind the plexi-screen of Beverly Barlowe's Virtual Reality Therapy device.

"S.A.R.A.H.! Medical emergency pack," Nathan ordered.

"Master bedroom. Cabinet is open."

While Jo ran to get the medical kit, Allison reached for the V.R. device but Nathan pulled her back sharply.

"No! The device interfaces directly with the brain. Removing it could send him into paralytic shock."

Allison looked up. "S.A.R.A.H. I need you to report on Sheriff Carter's vitals."

S.A.R.A.H. began to reel off blood pressure, heart rate and various other measurements as Jo returned lugging a massive medical kit. Nathan could only mentally thank Fargo and his paranoia as Allison opened it and began to select items from among the contents. Nathan grasped Jack's jerking head and held him still as Allison pressed a loaded hypo against Carter's neck, and Nathan was relieved when the violent shaking began to subside.

"Anti-seizure," Allison explained, more for Zoe and Jo's benefit than for his.

Eventually Carter stilled, lying blank-eyed for several seconds longer before data began to flow over the plexi-screen and his eyes began to move rapidly as his brain finally engaged with the device on what Nathan hoped was a far less violent level. Nathan heard sounds and voices from downstairs.

"Vitals are stabilizing, Doctor Blake, and the medical response team has arrived. Shall I send them up?"

"Yes. We need to get him to Global immediately."

Nathan stood back next to Jo, drawing Zoe with him as the medical team poured into the room and surrounded the now too-still figure on the bed. He rested a hand on Zoe's shoulder, partially to reassure and partially to stop her from pushing back through the medics to reach her father.

"Let them do their job, Zoe," he murmured when he felt her small frame tense beneath his hand.

"Doctor Stark? Will Sheriff Carter be all right?"

"I don't know, S.A.R.A.H." Nathan murmured.

Allison took control of getting Carter transported to the Global Dynamics medical section and Nathan could only stand by silently as they took Carter out of the bunker and loaded him into the ambulance, unsurprised when Allison clambered on-board with him. Jo held Zoe back from joining her father when Allison give a small but firm shake of her head. That alone told Nathan that it was serious, and he felt his heart sink at the thought of Carter not even making it to Global.

"Deputy?" He gestured towards Zoe.

"I've got her. Go!"

He followed the ambulance back to Global, using his hands-free cell to call Henry when he gained no response from Beverly Barlowe. He knew she was out of town for a few days, visiting a client in Washington D.C., but he hadn't expected her to switch off even the voice messaging service.

When he reached the infirmary, Zoe was right behind him, running to catch up with his long strides. At the door to the emergency section, he turned and caught her shoulders, expression implacable.

"Wait here," he barked sharply, eyes flicking to Jo who had only just caught up to them. Jo placed a restraining arm around Zoe as Nathan turned away, pushing through the final door.

"Doctor Stark! Please! He's my dad!"

Nathan faltered but refused to look back in case he weakened and let her through with him, feeling an almost paternal need to protect her. Inside, the medics were already stripping Carter out of his clothing, using razor sharp scissors to cut through the thick uniform material, and being very careful not to dislodge the V.R. device; Allison would have already given instructions not to tamper with it. He watched as the sharp scissors slid through the brown undershirt like it was made of paper rather than strong cotton. Carefully, they hooked Carter up to the monitors one at a time, waiting patiently as Nathan assessed the impact of each new piece of electronic equipment coming online in case it interfered with the Therapy device. Carter's heart rate elevated when Doctor Guerro flicked the switch on an imaging monitor.

"Off," Nathan ordered, and they watched as Carter's heart beat settled, sighing gently in relief once the readings stabilized. "We can't risk anything more until we know what we're dealing with." He watched as a nurse threaded Carter's arms through a hospital gown. "We need to talk to Zoe, and find out what happened."

He keyed open the door and beckoned her and Jo to come through; Henry was right behind them.

"Henry! Any ideas?"

"I don't even understand how it failed. It went through rigorous-"

"He left work early," Jo interrupted. "He had a headache after this morning. Doctor Babajanian's spinning machine. He stood up underneath it."

An image of the machine came into Nathan's mind as he remembered signing off the budget on Babajanian's project. He had meant to follow up on the experiment as it had shown some potential. Nathan winced as he imagined Carter's head meeting the heavy, fast-rotating parts on the machine.

"How hard was he hit?"

"Hard."

"How many times?" Nathan asked, knowing from the look in both Allison and Guerro's eyes that they were thinking the same as him.

She winced. "Repeatedly... but he said he was fine."

"Skull fracture possibly," Allison murmured.

Dr. Guerro sighed. "We can't confirm using any equipment that might interfere with the device. MRIs, X-rays... but the old fashioned way..." His voice trailed off as he pulled out a penlight and flicked it back and forth across Carter's open yet unseeing blue eyes. "Uneven dilation. He has a concussion at the very least. No bleeding into the eyes but," he indicated towards the trail of drying blood from Carter's ears. Gently, Guerro began to run his fingertips over the parts of Carter's head he could reach, looking for depressions. 

"We may need to relieve pressure on the brain if its swelling," Allison responded as she conversed in quiet tones with her medical colleague.

Nathan stepped back to talk with Henry, knowing Allison and Guerro would handle the medical side of this problem whereas he and Henry needed to focus on the therapy device.

Two hours later, they were no closer to finding a way to remove Carter from the device safely. The seizures returned intermittently, and each time Carter grew weaker as the stress on his body increased. Abby Carter returned, and Nathan had no answers for her. Carter was fighting with the device, probably unaware that he was in a virtual reality based on Eureka and all the people in it down to the smallest detail, that was meant to help the wearer resolve personal issues. Nathan couldn't even contemplate how much emotional baggage someone like Carter could be carrying. On the personal front he had a broken marriage and a delinquent daughter, and a pathetic rivalry for Allison's affection that was doomed to remain unrequited because he simply wasn't Allison's type. Professionally, he was an ex-US Marshal who'd seen some terrible sights during his career in law enforcement judging by his personnel file, and he had experienced trauma both mentally and physically in the performance of that duty.

Henry returned from Barlowe's with a second prototype of her therapy device, and Nathan took it off him, grateful that he finally had something to work with - so long as Carter could hold on long enough. As he turned away, the monitors began to go crazy again and this time Carter was fighting back hard, face flushed hard and sweating. His body went rigid, every muscle strained as his body tried to reconcile with what his mind was seeing.

The readings continued to climb and Nathan knew they had run out of time, his chest tightening and his mind reeling from a sense of loss that he could not even begin to fathom.

The monitor flatlined and Carter's whole body seemed to let go, collapsing like a rag doll as his eyes stopped flickering and his face took on a blank, death-like mask. Zoe cried out and lunged for her father, only to be held back by her mother, and Nathan felt his own heart break at her despairing cry. Just as suddenly the monitor blipped, and Guerro and Allison began CPR, awkwardly using a resuscitation mask beneath the V.R.'s visor while the therapy device continued to stream information into Carter's now comatose mind.

Somehow they managed to stabilize him but no amount of physical stimulation brought him back from wherever his mind and the therapy device had taken him.

***

In the three weeks since they found Jack unconscious and seizing on Zoe's bed, he and Henry had put all their energy and brain power into taking apart Barlowe's prototype but with limited success. Whatever was happening inside Jack's head simply couldn't be replicated. It was as if his mind had simply decided to accept what he was seeing, possibly as a defense mechanism to prevent further damage to his psyche.

Nathan could almost understand that concept as there were plenty of times recently when he wished he could escape from the regrets and pains of his own life. He had spent hours combing over every detail of the experiment that had caused the death of Kim Anderson and the destruction of the Artifact, trying to see where it had all gone so tragically wrong. He was on suspension while the D.O.D. conducted their own review of the incident, with Allison taking over as interim director, and Nathan half expected them to insist on having him redacted. It would have been Carter's job to escort him from the town. 

Barlowe's disappearance, coupled with the discovery that she had sabotaged the experiment that had resulted in Kim's death, had exonerated him, and two weeks after Carter fell into a coma, the D.O.D. offered him his old job back. He refused, accepting the lesser post of Director of Section Five Research instead so he could continue to focus on Jack Carter.

Henry had been right about one thing. These past weeks had shown him that being the Director of Global Dynamics had left him with very little time to pursue his own research. It hadn't seemed to matter much to him because schmoozing with senators and the Pentagon had fed his hunger for power, but Jack's accident had redirected his focus with laser precision. Now, everything beyond the man lying comatose in that infirmary bed seemed unimportant in comparison.

Sometime during those three weeks, Carter had become Jack as Nathan finally recognized why he was pushing so hard to get Allison back when there was every indication that their relationship had no future. He simply hadn't wanted to lose Jack to Allison rather than the other way around. It was an Epiphany that he could have well done without, especially as he had done a great job at alienating Jack with his snide remarks and ridicule since the day they met.

Late every evening, Nathan left his Level Five laboratory and headed back up to the infirmary, spending an hour - sometimes more - sitting with Jack. He spoke of his day, of the setbacks and small steps forward. He spoke of the stupidity of other scientists that had taken him away from his own research, sometimes chuckling over Fargo's antics and Taggart's even stranger experiments. He knew others also took their turn sitting with Jack. Vince came by regularly, with the aroma of Vinspresso coffee and sometimes even cheeseburger and fries filling the private room where Jack slept away his existence in a virtual world beyond their reach, hoping Jack's sense of smell would draw him back where everything else had so far failed.

That evening Nathan was surprised to find Zoe by her father's side, holding her father's hand, and he had to check his wristwatch to confirm that it was almost midnight.

"Zoe?"

"Hey, Doctor Stark."

She looked tired, with her eyes rimmed in red from tears shed earlier. He always felt guilty around her because he never had any good news to impart. He and Henry had made some progress in understanding how Barlowe's device worked but it simply wasn't enough. When she asked him again about the device he sank down on the second visitor's chair on the other side of the bed and tried to explain it to her, aware that even though she was Jack's kid, her I.Q. was a damn sight higher than most people in Eureka.

"We know how it interfaces with the brain but the problem is your dad." Nathan held up a hand when she took on an affronted expression. "I don't mean that unkindly. The device was created to resolve conflicts, with the wearer able to tap into their subconscious yet still remain in control and leave the simulation at any time."

"I know-."

"Your father doesn't know it's a simulation, so he doesn't realize that the therapy will continue until he either resolves whatever issue has him trapped in there... or he figures out that none of it is real."

"If it's a program then can't someone... reprogram it to tell him it's not real?"

Nathan snorted and shook his head. "Barlowe's device is single user inter-"

"What about the mind probe used on Doctor Thatcher and my dad?" she asked, referring to the device that Nathan had designed - and that Jack had tested while hoping to access the mind of a old scientist with dementia, who might hold the key to stopping a doomsday weapon being deployed. 

Nathan felt a little ashamed that he'd been so careless with Jack's life and sanity on that occasion, allowing the test to go ahead. From the video footage, the experiment itself had been painful for Jack, and the after effects had lingered for days with Jack unable to separate some of his memories from Thatcher's.

"Your father's mind is so fragile right now that he'd never be able to stand the pain of linking..." he trailed off, suddenly deep in possibilities. In the months following what Jack had called the Death Ray incident, Nathan had spent a few hours working on the mind probe device to see if it still had potential following its near-successful human trial.

"What is it?" Zoe leaned in. "Doctor Stark?"

"It doesn't have to link to Jack," he murmured..

"Zoe."

Nathan was startled from his thoughts by another voice tinged with frustration and anger, and looked up to find Abby Carter standing cross-armed in the doorway.

"Mom, I want to stay here with dad. He wouldn't leave me." Her voice took on the stubborn tone that Nathan had grown familiar with over the past year from her father. "I won't leave him."

"I'm sorry, Zoe, but you don't get a say in this. You heard what Doctor Guerro said. He might never regain consciousness."

"Studies have proven that comatose patients can often hear the people who visit them."

"Zoe. I'm sorry but I have to go back to L.A., and as your mother and sole legal guardian, you have no choice but to come with me tomorrow."

"Doctor Stark. Please? Isn't there any way I could-."

"No. I'm sorry."

Nathan wished he could override Abby Carter's parental rights and keep Zoe by her father's side but he didn't have the right to interfere.

Her eyes expressed her feelings of betrayal, and he felt his heart breaking anew as she wrapped her arms round her dad and buried her face against his chest, tucked under his chin, sobbing quietly. He wished he could let her stay, knowing there would be plenty of people offering to take guardianship over her, including himself. Except he worked practically all the hours he could these days, having lost interest in his pursuit of Allison after Jack's accident.

***

Another two months passed while he and Henry worked on the enhanced Memory Transference device, leaving Zane and Fargo to figure out a way to hack into the programming - or essentially, into Jack's brain.

Zane yelled out in frustration as yet another attempt failed. "We need a hook to get in there but Carter's perception of every character is overriding any new ones I introduce. I've even tried an alternate time line scenario but the program couldn't handle all the variables and has defaulted back to known personalities."

Fargo pushed up his glasses. "Plus the program was designed to back off if the patient cannot face whatever issue-."

Nathan interrupted. "I've found a way to interface the enhanced Memory Transference device with Barlowe's therapy device."

Zane frowned. "Not with Carter?"

"No. Physically, his head injuries are healed, but his mind's too fragile."

Zane shook his head. "You still need a hook to get in there. Taking over one of the existing virtual characters won't..." Zane trailed off, blue eyes widening and sparking with an idea. "But maybe you don't need to."

"What is it?"

"Earlier today the program began restoring **your** character."

"My-?"

"Your character went offline months ago, but if that enhanced transference device works, then maybe we can give Carter the real you."

***

**Present Time**

"Jack." Nathan grasped Jack's face in his hands, forcing Jack to look at him. "It's not real. None of this is real."

"Not real?" Jack's eyes widened in confusion but it faded into compassion as Jack reached back, holding Nathan's face just as fiercely and yet also gently. "It's real, Nathan. You're safe now. You're home."

For a moment Nathan was confused by the compassion in the blue eyes until he realized Jack had taken his words the wrong way.

"Jack."

Nathan felt a jolt of pain inside his head and screwed his eyes closed. He could feel the program trying to reassert itself over the construct of his character. He wasn't certain how long his connection to Jack's Virtual Reality would last and could imagine Zane's fingers flying over the keyboard as he tried to write around the code trying to replace him with the virtual representation of Nathan Stark.

"Jack, you have to believe me. You are trapped in a virtual world created by Beverly Barlowe's Therapy device-."

"No. No. That was years ago, and there was no way I'd put that damn thing on for a second time no matter what's written into my contract."

"Second?"

"I figured out what it wanted and went into the light."

Nathan felt sick inside, recalling that moment months ago when Jack had died. He had always scoffed at near-death experiences, with people claiming to have seen a white light beckoning them towards it, but for three whole minutes, Jack had been dead and even though they resuscitated him, they had still lost him.

"Jack."

"No. I woke up, and Abby was there, and Zoe. Everyone was there. **You** were there, with Henry and Allison-."

"You never woke up, Jack. This," he waved a hand around. "All of this is just a reconstruction from your mind interfacing with the therapy device. It's still trying to resolve whatever issue is keeping you trapped in here."

Pain lanced through Nathan again, and he looked in horror as his body began to dissolve and reform as the V.R. program tried to wrestle control back.

"No!" Jack was gripping him tighter, eyes wide with fear as another emotion filled his eyes; one of need and loss... and love. "No! I can't lose you again!"

In that moment, Nathan knew that all those messy feelings of want and desire that he had for Jack Carter were returned in full, and he ached from knowing his actions towards Jack might have forced Jack to repress them. Nathan could feel himself disassembling molecule by molecule. Time was running out and he could think of only one last way to convince Jack. He tightened his hands around Jack's face and dragged him into a fierce kiss, pouring every hope and dream, and every ounce of love and need and want into that kiss. For an eternity, Jack seemed frozen in time, and Nathan wanted to sob in grief as he lost sensation in his legs and arms, feeling it creeping over his body.

Then he felt it. The first tentative response from Jack that grew stronger and harder even as Nathan felt his mind being forced away, the pain almost unbearable but willingly suffered for one more precious second with Jack. He blinked and almost screamed in despair as the walls of the infirmary came back into view, and his eyes dropped to the comatose man on the bed beside him, unheeding of the tears streaming down his face at coming so close to bringing Jack home... to him.

The alarms on the monitors began to ring out as everything changed.

****

"No!"

Jack reeled back as he felt the change crawl over the man kissing him so intensely, seeing parts of Nathan dissolve away just as it had in the Time Management laboratory that fateful day. He couldn't face this again. He couldn't lose Nathan again, not when he could finally admit that he cared for him; that he loved him.

Around him the world began to disintegrate. He could see the Global Dynamics building slowly dissolving, disappearing into tiny shards of light that swirled away, just like Nathan. It was closing in on him, eating through the parking lot, through the other vehicles parked close by. He could feel its tendrils reaching through the Cherokee to tingle against his skin.

A flash of blue light flared momentarily in the sky, just as it had when time had looped on the day he lost Nathan, and through the fissure created above him he could see an infirmary room. He could see Allison leaning over him momentarily, and Zane and Fargo and Henry. When Nathan appeared in the crack in the sky, Jack felt his heart momentarily still in his chest.

He adored Allison. He adored Kevin and Jenna and he loved his life with them but, deep down, he'd always known it wasn't enough, that they were a substitute for what he couldn't admit to truly wanting. His world was vanishing around him, literally, and he reached out for the one truth that he had so long denied. He reached out for Nathan.

The high pitch of alarms grew in volume as his eyes blinked in the low light surrounding him. His body felt weak, and his limbs too heavy to move. His throat felt dry and he swallowed harshly. Warmth and sensation crept around his hand as he felt his fingers enveloped in a larger hand; Nathan's hand.

"Jack?"

He tried to answer but his throat was too dry.

The hand tightened around his, and when Nathan said his name again, Jack could hear the joy, reverence and relief in his voice.

****

**Epilogue:**

Three and a half months.

Jack could barely believe that only three and a half months had passed instead of three and half years, and yet the signs had been there all along. He recalled the way road journeys seemed to pass so quickly and how he so easily lost track of time as he tried to work through whatever new sticky problem had befallen the inhabitants of the small town. His sleeping hours in the V.R. had been only seconds in duration in reality, and some of the really strange events finally had explanations.

Fargo... and Zane.

On a subconscious level he had heard his visitors regaling him with events around the town, translating some of those words into images that became all too real inside his head. He recalled the aroma of coffee and his favorite meal at Cafe Diem, and other obnoxious smells that had translated into goo attacks or other weird science. He knew now that he'd also heard Nathan's voice every day and it had comforted and saddened him at the same time. It explained why Nathan had preyed upon his mind over the ' _years_ ' overshadowed by the guilt of having wished him gone when the undeniable truth was he had wanted the exact opposite.

Until now Jack had never considered himself as anything other than straight. He'd never had more than a healthy curiosity in the locker rooms, excusing his interest as normal male behavior in assessing a potential rival or brother-in-arms. But then he'd never met someone like Nathan Stark before; someone who turned heads... Someone who had turned his whole world view on its head.

Nathan had barely left his side for the first two days except to eat, change and sleep, only relinquishing his place in the chair beside Jack's bed when a small whirlwind of blond hair and sparkling eyes had buried herself against his chest and neck, hugging him tight. By then he'd regained a little strength but it still wasn't enough when he simply wanted to hold her tight in return.

His Zoe.

He remembered losing her in the virtual world, feeling sad when her voice was no longer part of his day but he'd already accepted that he had to let go of her sometime. It occurred to him that losing those three and a half years could also be a good thing as he now had the years to live again with Zoe and, if he'd have him, with Nathan too.

Looking into Nathan's open smile, he had a strong feeling that wasn't going to be a problem.

"You ready to get out of here?"

Jack smiled across at Nathan and nodded. A week spent in the infirmary was a lifetime in the real world, making him wonder why he had never noticed that inside the virtual reality. Nathan had tried to explain how the therapy device tapped into an area of the subconscious used for dreaming but, as usual, it went way over his head. Still, he had to admit that he'd had a lot of strange dreams even before landing in Eureka, where time was bent out of proportion like one of those Salvador Dali paintings of melting clocks, and yet all had seemed perfectly normal while he was dreaming.

At least he hadn't shared that naked dream with half the town after all, he thought in relief.

Nathan helped Jack into the wheelchair - an unwelcome necessity until Jack had rebuilt more of his stamina, strength and muscle tone. Nathan bent over him, using the arm rests for support as he leaned in to kiss Jack softly. Jack shifted a little in the chair as his pants became a little tighter, reminding him of another reason why he was eager to get out of the infirmary and back home to his own bed.

For the last week all they could exchange were quiet words, small touches and deliberately gentle, almost platonic kisses that still managed to turn him on so hard that he thought he might die of frustration. Not that he'd be able to do anything about that straight away as, beside them, Zoe was almost giddy with excitement at the prospect of going home to the bunker.

"Mom says I can stay as long as I want. She said you both needed adult supervision," Zoe added with a sly and cheeky glance at Nathan.

Jack didn't believe it was possible to love someone even more but her unconditional acceptance of his changing relationship with Nathan made his heart want to burst with love and pride. Nathan's lips twitched at her words.

"As long as you're not planning to... chaperon, as I have my own plans this evening-."

Zoe stuck her fingers in her ears. "Arrgh! TMI! Mental scarring!"

Nathan gave an open and carefree laugh while Jack flushed in embarrassment, feeling mortified at his daughter not just knowing but also visualizing what Nathan planned to do with him when they were finally alone.

"Let's go home," Nathan stated, his voice still tinged with laughter.

As they left Global Dynamics, Jack looked back and saw part of the building waver a little. For a moment his heart froze, only beating again when he felt Nathan's large hand palm his cheek and draw his attention.

"You okay?"

As he looked deep into Nathan's eyes, seeing the love and concern reflected back at him, he smiled. For three and a half years he hadn't realized he was living inside his own mind, with his world driven by Barlowe's therapy device. It had been crazy and full of regrets and denial, but not so bad when he thought back on some of the false memories implanted by the device. As he glanced out of the passenger window, he saw that one tiny corner waver again, and grinned when he realized it was just a heat wave from some exhaust port high on the building.

It didn't matter though for if this was still part of that same virtual world, then reality could go take a hike. He had Zoe back in his life and, more than that, he had a new future ahead of him to explore with Nathan, filled with endless possibilities.

It was real enough for him.

END


End file.
